Printing and Framing Porpoise Prints (Artwork) for Your Home or Office

This page is designed to give you ideas on types of prints that might work and some general information around your chosen animal prints theme.
Order prints and have them carefully rolled and safely secured in a cardboard cylinder and delivered to your door.

Porpoise Prints

Porpoises are small cetaceans of the family Phocoenidae; they are related to whales and dolphins. They are distinct from dolphins, although the word porpoise has been used to refer to any small dolphin, especially by sailors and fishermen. The most obvious visible difference between the two groups is that porpoises have flattened, spade-shaped teeth distinct from the conical teeth of dolphins, and shorter beaks.

The name derives from French pourpois, originally from Medieval Latin porcopiscus (porcus pig + piscus fish).

Porpoises, divided into six species, live in all oceans, mostly near the shore. Freshwater populations of the Finless Porpoise also exist. Probably the best known species is the Harbour Porpoise, which can be found across the Northern Hemisphere. Like all toothed whales, porpoises are predators, using sounds to locate prey and to coordinate with others. They hunt fish, squid, and crustaceans.

Porpoises apparently diverged from dolphins about 15 million years ago in the northern Pacific, then spread across the globe much later.

Porpoises, along with whales and dolphins, are descendants of land-living ungulates (hoofed animals) that first entered the oceans around 50 million years ago. During the Miocene (23 to 5 MYA), mammals were fairly modern. The cetaceans diversified, and fossil evidence suggests that porpoises diverged from dolphins and other cetaceans around 15 MYA. The oldest fossils are known from the shallow seas around the north Pacific, with animals spreading to the European coasts and southern hemisphere only much later, during the Pliocene.

Recently-discovered hybrids between male Harbour porpoises and female Dall's Porpoises indicate that the two species may actually be members of the same genus.